More than one hundred works, from private and public collections, are brought together to (re)discover one of the first post-modern movements based on the questioning of abstraction and the return to the figure. Curated by Patrick Mauriès, the exhibition put the spotlight on artists who have participated to this movement, such as Frenchman Christian Bérard (1902-1949), Russians Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957), Eugene (1899-1972) and Leonid Berman (1898-1976) and Dutchman Kristians Tonny (1907-1977).
First gathered in Paris in the 1920s, those took part in the American, British and Italian artistic scenes, creating links between Picasso, surrealism, figurative artists from the 20th century and living arts for which they designed memorable shows.
Invited by the Musée Marmottan Monet to establish an artistic dialogue with its collections, the Swiss painter Marc-Antoine Fehr has taken two paintings by Claude Monet as his starting point: Le Pont de l’Europe, Gare Saint Lazare (1877) and Champs d’Iris jaunes à Giverny (1887).
Marc-Antoine Fehr focuses on the narrative potential of these paintings, made possible by the instantaneity of Monet’s vision as he captured these transient scenes, which he painted from life. Playing with this effect, he presents a set of 240 gouaches on three walls of the exhibition space, each measuring 7.5 x 101 cm, with Monet’s two paintings superimposed on them. Begun in 1999 and appropriately titled Le Pays sans fin (Country Without End), this work, which is carried out anew in each venue, is intended to be continued with no scheduled end.
The artist takes visitors on a journey starting at the Gare Saint Lazare, destination unknown. The landscape rushes by, seen through the train window. Like a traveller who only captures a continuous fragment of what he sees, the visitor is unable to take in the entire artwork in one go. Le Pays sans fin invites us to journey physically and visually through the colours of the painting, catching fleeting glimpses of outlines, deserted buildings and silent natural environments.
